WOLVERINE #146 - January 2000

Summary:
Archangel, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Jubilee search the Morlock
Tunnels for Death, who’s recently escaped the mansion. Psylocke uses
Cerebro to telepathically connect with the team, which is soon ambushed
by Death. Individually, they try to revive his memories and restore
Wolverine’s proper persona. Eventually, Psylocke reaches Wolverine, as
Jubilee stands before him offering no defense. However, just as
Wolverine’s personality reemerges, Archangel undergoes a strange
transformation.

Continuity Notes:

Psylocke
must use Cerebro to access her telepathy, since directly entering her
mind would release the Shadow King following the events of X-Men #79.

Shadowcat shows no reaction when she phases directly through Wolverine’s adamantium, which would seem to contradict Wolverine #126’s claim that phasing through adamantium is horribly painful.

I can't recall any issue from the main chapters of this crossover that had Death/Wolverine captured and actually contained in the mansion.

“Huh?” Moment:
An errant word balloon belonging to Nightcrawler appears after
Death/Wolverine stabs Shadowcat in the foot. I can’t tell if it’s meant
to be there or not. I guess it could work as Nightcrawler’s response
to Shadowcat’s line (She tells Wolverine he isn’t this mean,
Nightcrawler interjects “Hah! Kitty may have ‘pegged’ me, mein freund,
but she skewered you.”), but it doesn’t match the tone. Why would
Nightcrawler joke around like this after seeing his friend get stabbed?

Review:
Even while these issues were being released, I think Erik Larsen made
it clear he wasn’t overly interested in keeping up with all of the
details of the latest line-wide crossover. My memory is that Fabian
Nicieza was brought in to co-write these issues while Larsen was on a
vacation, although I’m not sure how the labor was divided. The dialogue
doesn’t read like Larsen’s work, leading me to wonder if his main
contribution was in the plotting. Larsen’s Wolverine issues tended to have references and flashbacks to various Uncanny X-Men
stories from the Claremont era, and this issue is filled with them as
the team tries to talk Wolverine out of Apocalypse’s brainwashing.
Perhaps Nicieza provided a rough outline based on his knowledge of
where the crossover would be, Larsen plotted it out page-by-page, and
Nicieza scripted it? Then again, the dialogue doesn’t really sound like
Nicieza’s, either. Considering the state of the X-office during this
time, it’s also a possibility that much of the script came for editorial.

Regardless,
this is a little more coherent than the average Larsen issue, and its
insertion into the ongoing Apocalypse crossover works rather well. The
chapter that has Wolverine returning to his true personality probably
should be run in his solo book, and the addition of Archangel is a smart
decision. (Archangel was severely underused in the other X-titles
during the 1999 Apocalypse crossover.) Drawing Archangel back into
whatever Apocalypse might have planned is a nice way to pull the story
away from a pat happy ending, and it works with the established
continuity.

Continuity
purists would also be happy to see the return of the classic
Wolverine/Archangel rivalry (“classic” to anyone who remembers
Claremont’s portrayal of their relationship, at least). I was always
bothered as a kid that the post-Claremont writers just ignored the fact
that Wolverine and Archangel hate each other after the X-Men and
X-Factor teams merged. I was certain that one day someone would do a story following up on the rivalry, but it never happened. Instead, we got Bishop, Omega Red, and the Upstarts.

4 comments:

wwk5d
said...

The closest we ever got to the Wolverine/Angel rivalry was the 2 of them acting rather bitchy towards each other during the Crimson Dawn storyline in Uncanny X-men, I believe. It was clear from that story they didn't like each other, but that was about it.

Of course, their rivalry wasn't the only thing forgotten that bugged me, they also forgot Storm and Gambit were good friends. I think the 2 of them interacted maybe 5 or 6 times total throughout the 90s?

Heh. Hate to tell you this, but Chuck Austen actually followed up on their rivalry in his god awful "She Lies With Angels Story" in UXM. In it, Angel basically apologizes to Wolverine for being such a dick.

Austen also had an earlier bit in UXM where Iceman tells Nightcrawler, to his face, that he STILL considers himself and the other original four the TRUE X-Men.

I always got the impression that Austen read that backup story in Classic X-Men (set right after the events of Krakoa) and just went to town.

The line "Kitty may have pegged me, but she skewered you" is from "Kitty's Fairy Tale" in Uncanny X-Men #153. I'm guessing this was meant to be another of the flashbacks references to the Claremont run that you mentioned.